On this day in music history: August 19, 1967 - "All You Need Is Love" by The Beatles hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week. Written primarily by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it is the fourteenth US chart topper for "The Fab Four. The Beatles will be asked to represent England as part of the first worldwide satellite broadcast "Our World." The only request that the organizers will make, is that the band come up with a song containing a simple message that the worldwide audience watching can understand. Having just released the landmark "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band" two weeks before, the band will quickly begin work on the song. John Lennon will come up with and write the majority of what will become "All You Need Is Love," with Paul McCartney helping him complete it. The basic track is recorded at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London on June 14th. The band performs the song on the live television broadcast from Studio One at Abbey Road Studios on June 25th. Lennon will sing his lead vocal live on the program, but will also record it again following the broadcast. The program will be seen by over 400 million people in 26 countries. Rush released as a single on July 7th, it will enter the Hot 100 at #71 on July 22nd, leaping to #1 just four weeks later. "All You Need Is Love" and its B-side "Baby You're A Rich Man" (recorded on May 11, 1967) will both be included on the US LP release of Magical Mystery Tour when it is released in late November of 1967. "All You Need Is Love" is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA.

I thought I had heard every imaginable cover version and reinterpretation of The Beatles' music but this operatic rendition of the Fab Four's "Ticket To Ride" by Cathy Berberian, which is done in all seriousness, outdoes them all in absurdity as well as in sheer entertainment value. It reminds me of when I first heard Mrs Miller who in the 1960's recorded a series of high-pitched, off-key covers of popular songs of the day. Mrs Miller's music promptly got filed under "novelty" while the Dutch operatic singer Berberian, who recorded the above Beatles cover for the Dutch TV show Cathy's Songbook in 1977 with Harold Lester on piano, is definitely a better singer - but no less entertaining than Mrs Miller.

Watching/listening to Cathy Berberian's version of the song prompted me to dig for some other covers of "Ticket To Ride" which, with production by George Martin, was originally released by The Beatles on their 1965 album, Help! as well as a single. These covers of "Ticket To Ride" (videos of a few of which appear below) range in quality and include The Carpenters' 1969 slowed down ballad version and Hüsker Dü's mid-eighties true to the original live version - my two personal favorites. Other versions, done from the years immediately following the original up until recently include The Bee Gees, Vanilla Fudge, Sly and Robbie who renamed it "Free Ticket To Ride," The 5th Dimension, Atomic Kitten, The Punkles, Kids Incorporated, and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame who did a concert (not a recorded) version on his solo acoustic tours both last year and earlier this year.

We all have those albums that we love so much that sometimes we like to keep them secret. They are our special little albums that we got crazy obsessed with 10 or 20 years ago that we think nobody else knows about. Of course, the world is much smaller than we sometimes fantasize that it is. There are tons of people just like us who like the same things that we do. Many years ago it was harder to find these people. It was sort of easier to have our secret bands that we liked...or it was at least easier to pretend that we were alone in our love of a certain band. This was before you could go to band's myspace page and see how many friends they had. Before you could read all the blogs about them. One of these bands that I was obsessed with is the great fantastic band called Blueboy. They were one of the greatest of the 90s British indie bands from the label Sarah Records. They were Twee, but they also had elements of shoegaze, indie pop, and Britpop. Sarah Records disappeared many years ago and most of the albums are impossible to find. However, they have slowly been reissued over the years, but it is these Blueboy albums that I have been waiting for.. I was first introduced to this band in 1996 by one of my ex-boyfriends. I was immediately fascinated and in love. I owned all three of the their albums on CD but sold them a couple of years ago. The relationship had ended and I just couldn't bring myself to listen to these albums anymore. I should have just hidden them a box somewhere to be found many years later, because once time had passed I felt the need to have this band in my life again. So of course I searched everywhere for them and I couldn't find them online anywhere. I couldn't find them in any of the Amoeba stores either. They were eventually reissued digitally and I of course ended up buying them this way, but there is something about owning the physical albums. I never really feel like I own an album if I just have it digitally. It just feels like I taped it off the radio or borrowed it from a friend. It never actually feels like my album until I own the physical CD or LP and have it sitting with the rest of my albums. These Blueboy albums were so important to me that I needed to own them. I felt like something was missing in my life without them. So I was I was still waiting for that day when they would be reissued on CD -- I didn't even care about bonus tracks or remastering. I just wanted them back in my collection.